Gallery: 30 Years of the GWage via Autoblog

In celebration of their 60th anniversary, otherwise known as the diamond anniversary, Adidas has added some diamond bling to one of their most popular shoe designs, the Superstar. The Diamond Superstar is made of fine leather and is accessorized with real diamonds and Swarovski crystals.

(PS: Limited edition, £450) Via Retro to Go & Luxist

I love inappropriately grunty utes. I loved owning a 1997 Land Rover Discovery with a lift but I love the Land Rover Defender series of utility vehicles even more. The crème de la crème of the lot, however, is the Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen, known as the G-Wagen or G-Class. Now, according to Luxist, 30 Years and Counting: Mercedes Celebrates With Special G-Class, Mercedes is coming out with an offroad-focused specialty vehicle known as the new EDITION30.PUR, which is cool, “a rugged off-roader to satisfy the serious trekkers that have embraced the G-Wagen for the past three decades. It’s all bare bones, with a hose-down interior and diesel engine and a heavy-duty hood you can actually stand on.” Now, that’s the one I want.

Mercedes-Benz has a variety of sport-utilities and crossovers in its line-up today, but long before luxury sport-utility vehicles turned mainstream, the German automaker was building a truck called the Geländewagen. Known as the G-Wagen or G-Class for short, the truck started production in 1979 as a tender for the Shah of Iran, and has been in production ever since. This year Mercedes is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the G-Wagen with a pair of special editions.

The first, called the EDITION30.PUR, is a rugged off-roader to satisfy the serious trekkers that have embraced the G-Wagen for the past three decades. It’s all bare bones, with a hose-down interior and diesel engine and a heavy-duty hood you can actually stand on. The EDITION30, however, is based on the luxurious, go-anywhere G500 and features unique Platinum Black paint and special leather and wood interior. Available now for order overseas, 60k Euros will get you the bare-bones EDITION30.PUR, while the luxuriously appointed EDITION30 edges closer to the 100k Euro mark.

Gallery: Mercedes-Benz G-Class EDITION30

Back in the late 70s and 80s, Aston Martin made a terrible mistake in a modern interpretation of the Aston Martin Lagonda from 1976-1989. It was the first modern Aston Martin.  It followed the unfortunate trend in the 70s and 80s when European car makers tried to become more like American muscle cars and tried to appeal to the need of the power brokers of the 80s who wanted bigger, faster, shinier, and more powerful emblems for their wealth.  The Lamborghini Countach, the Lamborghini LM002, the Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer, and this model of Porsche 911 are prime examples.

Well, according to Jalopnik, Aston Martin plans to revive the brand:

As rumored, Aston Martin is readying the Lagonda nameplate for an all-newGeneva Motor Show concept. The secret concept, previewing a new brand, is said to be a perfect blend of practicality and performance.

Lagonda was founded in 1906, but was purchased and integrated by Aston Martin in 1947. The Lagonda name has been affixed to Aston Martins since then, and graced the quirky 80s-era Aston Martin Lagonda, but has never been its own brand. According to Aston Martin, the Lagonda nameplate is preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year (no, that makes no sense to us either) and to commemorate the occasion, an all-new concept will debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

There’s no telling what this concept could be other than a competitor in the luxury car market filled with Bentleys and Rolls Royces, but Aston Martin is already talking about a production schedule for a 2012 on-sale date. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Aston Martin Press Release:

Aston Martin CEO confirms the revival of the Lagonda MarqueAston Martin Chief Executive Officer Dr Ulrich Bez has today confirmed his intention to revive the Lagonda marque.

In a statement today he said, “After my eight years with Aston Martin, four with profitability, and 16 months of independence, it’s time to think about a longer term future. Aston Martin is an honest, authentic brand which builds the most beautiful sportscars combining modern technology with craftsmanship. Next year we will launch the four door Rapide sportscar, and this will be followed by the project ‘one 77′, the most spectacular Aston Martin ever. Aston Martins are currently available in 32 countries but we will remain limited in our market penetration by the pure character of our cars – sportscars.

“We have now investigated and concluded that the revival of the Lagonda brand would allow us to develop cars which can have a different character than a sportscar, and therefore offer a perfect synergy. Lagonda will use a unique design language as Aston Martin does. We will take elements of DNA from the past but will be very future orientated as we are with Aston Martin. With Lagonda offering exclusive, luxurious and truly versatile products with high quality and usability and suitable for both existing and emerging markets, I believe we can be present in more than 100 countries in the world.

“In 2009 Lagonda is about to celebrate its 100th birthday and in its centenary year we are confident that we will show the first concept of a car which could be in the market in 2012,” he confirmed.

I guess this is what another model year of the Aston Martin Lagonda looked like:

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Here’s the proper press release from McKinney.com:

McKinney.com – A Website You Can Talk To

Warsaw, Poland (February 10th, 2009) — Warsaw-based interactive agency Othersource announced today the launch of McKinney.com, a groundbreaking website created in partnership with the awardwinning advertising agency, in Durham, N.C.

Conversations with a website
Using cutting edge technologies, the new McKinney.com is reinventing the conversation had between the ad agency and its audience. Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, the site possesses an unusual level of interactivity. Visitors are able to ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

The functionality is groundbreaking. The back-end employs a 3D Flash engine with artificial intelligence, and the interface design is cutting-edge, making it one of the most experiential and unconstrained agency sites on the Web.

Unique tech mix
Othersource worked with linguists who understood, on a high-level, the structure of language. They also enlisted programmers familiar with semantics to help develop the sophisticated algorithm. “Creating the conversation engine’s ‘brain’ was quite labor intensive,” said Othersource Managing Partner Thomas Krotkiewski. “We enlisted two linguists (one a PhD from the University of Oxford), to analyze questions provided by McKinney, and to supply us with all possible ways the questions could be posed. If this search method fails, a backup proprietary tag search function will launch and search matching content. And finally, if the answer is still thought to be inadequate, the question is forwarded to McKinney for human processing. To be sure the conversation engine learns from its mistakes, there is a conversation history log on the proprietary Content Management System. This level of integration between conversation engine and website is completely unique,”

“We were looking for a production partner who would not only bring our vision to life, but enhance it,” added Keith Ciampa, who served as McKinney’s interactive creative director on the project. “Most true innovation happens on the fringes of the industry, by people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take risks. When we explained our vision for a conversational site, based on a completely open architecture, which could grow and become smarter the more it was used, Othersource knew we were asking for something that had never been done, and they couldn’t have been more excited to help us figure it out.”

Conversation-driven search
A proprietary tag search was built into the back end of the new site so search results can be presented dynamically, and not just direct visitors to a static page. For example, a visitor can ask a question like, “show me TV campaigns for client X from November last year” and an animated 3D tunnel will appear, with search results as moving thumbnail images, that the visitor can fly through. “As far as we can tell, this functionality is unique,” said Krotkiewski.

Like gas molecules
The site has an advanced 3D graphical interface. “The key to the 3D interface is the ‘cloud view,’ which shows a cloud of graphical thumbnails, moving like molecules in a gas, bouncing randomly off each other while also reacting to mouse input. The cloud can be filtered by the visitor to only show thumbnails representing certain types of content,” said Martin Ignaczak, Account Director at Othersource.

Flash without drawbacks
The site has overcome the limitations of Flash: “The site is fully searchable by Google, each page can bookmarked and linked to, and each view can be downloaded as a printable PDF,” continued Ignaczak. Working in the virtual

New technologies were key to organizing the project. Othersource used video-conferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, e-mails, and other electronic means of communication to coordinate the work with McKinney. “We only met face-to-face after the launch, which proves we are able to run even very complex projects completely in the virtual,” added Krotkiewski.

“We are honored by McKinney’s decision to partner with Othersource for the production — we were competing with some quite well-known US interactive agencies in the pitch. Being chosen in spite of being based overseas is quite a feat. We hope this project is the beginning of a long relationship with McKinney. We also expect it will generate more opportunities for us in the US overall,” said Krotkiewski.

“Partnering with Othersource on this project was both a rewarding and challenging experience,” said McKinney Interactive Technology Director Trevor O’Brien. “The biggest hurdle was taking existing technologies and customizing them to work together in ways they were not initially intended to. Othersource helped deliver a site that is an experiential and innovative place to interact online. It’s exciting to see what two like-minded teams can create together.”

About Othersource
Othersource provides interactive services from strategy to production to companies around the world. In 2008, the agency participated in projects for companies such as MetLife, The National Constitution Center in Boston, Accenture Poland, Puma, Imation Europe and others, in Poland, Sweden, Holland, the UK and the USA. The majority of its clients are Advertising and Interactive agencies that need support in creating campaign strategies, creative concepts and interactive production for their clients. About McKinney McKinney is an independent advertising agency that’s focused on reinventing the conversation between people and brands. Our goal is to lead the convergence of offline and online (today, 35% of our revenue is interactive and 88% of our frontline staff is actively engaged in the digital space), to identify relevant applications for new technologies and to deliver game-changing ideas that deliver extraordinary results for our clients, their customers and our people.

Founded in 1969, the Durham, NC-based agency’s clients include Coldwell Banker, Gold’s Gym, Major League Gaming, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, ProShares, Qwest Communications, Sherwin-Williams, Travelocity, Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Brown- Forman Corporation brands Bonterra, Chambord, Sonoma-Cutrer, Southern Comfort and Tuaca.

Most recently, Virgin Atlantic Airways and McKinney took top honors at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Awards that celebrate the “mixx” of creativity and effectiveness in digital marketing. Virgin Atlantic’s experiential launch, “Love from Above,” won a Gold MIXX in the Mobile Platforms category for the company’s first-ever WAP site.

For more information, visit our website at www.mckinney.com or the McKinney Newsroom by contacting Janet Northen at janet.northen@mckinney.com.

Additional information:
Thomas Krotkiewski
Managing Partner
Othersource
+48-601-145398
thomas@othersource.com
Timezone: GMT+1
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications

Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
McKinney
+1 919.313.4062
janet.northen@mckinney.com

This is the full text of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, courtesy of NowPublic, KansasCity.com, thanks to a link from @Aisle7

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort – even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

I received an invitation from Corbett Santana to attend what sounds like a super-cool inauguration party — if you happen to be celebrating in Berlin, Germany!  I will be in DC for the inauguration but I thought I would pass this on.

Barack Obama Inaugration Celebration/Party in GOYA
Goya, Nollendorfplaz 5 in Berlin
January 20th 2009
Come celebrate with “US”
LIVE from Washington D.C. on BIG screen!
The Inauguration Ceremony of BARACK OBAMA.

• 16:30 Doors open and we will project the entire Ceremony on a large screen in GOYA.
• 16:00 The ceremony starts at and ends at 20:00 (according to a press release from Washington D.C.)
• 20:00 Guest speakers from the different American abroad organizations. There is the POSSIBILITY the Governor Mayor of Berlin will make an appearance. THIS IS NOT CONFIRMED AT THE MOMENT!
• 21:00 Live Music from FOLKADELIC who played at the BABYLON Theater Election Party
• 22:30 DJ “Daddy-O” after playing Funky Soul Classics.

Tickets:  10-,€ & 6-,€ after 21:00
To reserve a ticket send a message to chair@demsinberlin.de
This is a by-partisan event all are welcomed!
There will be an after party at SURPRISE Club & Disco for those of you who find GOYA too expensive & stuffy. A shuttle vehicle will be available to transport you door to door from 22:00 till 12:00. Entrance and shuttle ride is free when you have a ticket for the Event in GOYA.

I go to Berlin Hauptbahnhof almost every day. Bahnhof is German for train station and Hauptbahnhof is German for the main train station. Every city has one. DC’s Hauptbahnhof is Union Station, for example, and in many ways comparable.

The Berlin Hauptbahnhof houses my local coffee shop, my local grocery story, etc. To be honest, there is always something going on there. And everything is a promotional or is branded. This is one of the rare train stations that have become a center for children and their families.

German “Hauptbahnhofs” and “Bahnhofs” are known to be dens of prostitution — however, Berlin Hbf is far from that. It is a destination. Also, because there are weird laws that prohibit retail stores from opening on Sunday, everyone comes to the Bahnhofs because only train stations and gas stations are licensed to do business on Sundays.

So, these stations are packed with all sorts of stores and are packed on Sundays by the people who want to do some shopping on the Lord’s Day.

The answer, of course, is “it takes about ten years of suffering hard work to become an overnight sensation.” In the case of new media and Web2.0, you can so that in a lot less time. Being an early — the earliest — adopter doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t necessary, really. However, any way you slice it, with a few exceptions, becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter, YouTube, Plurk, QIK, Utterli, LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace is going to require a lot of your resources (time and/or money) and more time than you probably planned out for your boss or your client — or yourself!

I am pretty interested in seeing how my Twitter profile has gone from nothing to 2,511+ followers. Twitterholic has allowed me to figure that out in an easy-to-read format, which I appreciate. I joined Twitter on January 6th, 2007. By October 30th, I had 441 followers. It took until May 5th, 2008, to break 1,000 followers. It only took until September 11th for me to break 2,000 followers, and now, as of December 7th (a day that lives in infamy), I have 2,511 followers. I find that interesting to study but I don’t know what it means.

I think I will venture to explain its meaning: social media requires investment and time. Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms “in its own.” There are many things that can aid the reef: safety, cleanliness, warmth, nutrients, oxygenation, etc… however, one of the most important thing is time and commitment.

Social media cultivation makes most PR and marketing professionals cringe at the thought of trying to sell these solutions to their clients. A client generally wants metrics now and right away. Clients oftentimes spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a social network platform, a blog, or a spate of social media profiles that are world class and amazingly turned; however, when the six-month mark comes around and the community is not yet bustling, most clients get severe cold feet and oftentimes abandon all of the work-in (and money out) as a failed campaign — right before the reef blooms!

It kills me to see the number of corporate blogs, home-grown social networks, message boards, and social network profiles that are like those bare and barren rocks and wrecks that never in fact ever blossomed into an emergent community manifest in a coral reef. An ecosystem as delicate and hardy as any social media space, from Twitter to Facebook, from MySpace to your corporate blog.

I forgot to also add to the resources plus time equation: commitment, consistency, calmness, dedication, generosity, and compassion. When you invest in online community as much as I do (2,511 on Twitter with 11,200 tweets, 2,734 on Facebook, 1,496 on LinkedIn, and 5,321 posts on my blog, an online presence I have had since 1999, for example) then you need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term. You will need to learn what each community will allow, suffer, enjoy, or penalize. You will learn where the borders are and you will learn what works (and draws people in) and what doesn’t (making them flee).

Well, with no further ado, here’s a lot of work, time, creativity, hours, minutes, wit, mistake, missteps, business, play, Washington, Berlin, Slovakia, San Diego, and a hundred other places. If you want to have 2,500 followers and you’re not already famous, you’ll have to put in the work. If you can achieve tens of thousands of followers, you’re probably already somebody; in that case, it wasn’t just overnight: you just put in your licks elsewhere. Otherwise, put on those work-gloves and start working!

Visit Chris Abraham’s Twitter Page
Visit Chris Abraham’s Webpage

• Chris Abraham was the 608,473rd person to sign up for twitter!
• Chris Abraham is ranked 843rd on twitterholic! (by followers)
• Chris Abraham is ranked 1st in their location on twitterholic!

Bio: Web strategist and new media guru and president of Abraham Harrison LLC, http://ahllc.eu
Joined Twitter on 2007-01-06 14:51:39

I am sitting here in Berlin, Germany, listening to NPR on 104.1 FM (yes, we have National Public Radio on-tap in Berlin, it is true), and I am rooting for Barack Obama. I have to admit that I voted Republican in the last two elections, in 2000 and 2004, because I was appalled by both Gore and Kerry. I was passionate about Bill Clinton during his eight years in office and preferred anything to Gore or Kerry, to be honest. That said, I want Barack Obama to win because the world wants Barack Obama to win.

After church yesterday, I got to talking to my fellow parishioners and they want Barack Obama. These are not your traditional European communists you hear about, they’re devout Christians — born again — who are probably considered pretty conservative in the context of Europe. However, in the context of America, even a right wing wingnut European is still relatively liberal by American standards.

When Berliners look at Barack Obama, they don’t see someone who will set race riots afire, they don’t see someone who will turn America into a Marxist-Leninist stronghold, they see a man who is sophisticated, education, trained, has a brain in his head, went to the best schools, has explored the world, cares about civil rights, and who will most likely be willing to span the broken bridges across the Atlantic to Europe and Russia and try his best to rebuild them and begin to regain the trust, admiration, and even envy that much of the world had fifty-years ago.

To them and to me, Barack Obama will be able to return the United States to the hands of the rational. A United States with a better separation between Church and State. Maybe even a country in which Jesus Christ is the co-pilot and not the pilot any more. Where saner, more peaceful, minds prevail. A nation willing to put away its herald and sword, stop with the Christian Crusades, the preemptive strikes, the unilateral military conquests, and the obsession with being Exceptional. Exceptionalism is the most dangerous aspect of the George W Bush and Neocon White House.

“When the United States looks abroad, it does so from an assumed position of moral and spiritual strength. For as long as the United States has existed, a perceived sense of its exceptionalism has permeated the way that Americans view the rest of the world . . . this view has been reinforced by the material reality of US economic and military strength. The essence of American exceptionalism is a celebration of the uniqueness and special virtue of the United States. It rests on the belief that the United States has a special role to play in the world, and unique qualities to bring to this role . . . The roots of the concept stem from the Puritan vision of America as a ‘shining city upon a hill’, a society designed to serve as a moral example to mankind.”

The idea that America is any better-suited than any other nation to lead based on some sort of Divine Inheritance or Plan is ludicrous and very insane, especially when no one else in the entire world agrees. I am a big fan of Mike Signer’s concept of exemplarism:

“Exemplarism is the principle that the United States could best serve the spread of liberal democracy by being an enviable example to the world—the shining light on the hill, the beacon. Being a good example requires strengthening the institutions that assure individual liberties, the rule of law, and the prosperity born of industry and commerce. Adherents to exemplarism would find themselves in agreement with Kant’s principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations.”

Telling yourself and everybody around you how amazing, brilliant, noble, moral, and generous you are when you’re the biggest and meanest and best-armed and best-outfitted man in the room is hubristic and kind of pathetic. Delusional, actually, and certainly not the best way for a man — or a country — to be. America is kind of being an International douchebag.

I must admit that I have a special weakness for exemplarism’s belief in the “principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations” even if you don’t like the way other nations are running their households. There is a certain amount of independence and internal liberty associated with being sovereign. Sovereignty, to me, is holy. To me, exporting culture, policy, morals, or any concept of character or politick is poor form, especially when it is at the tip of a sword.

What scares me about American Exceptionalism is that it allows just about any behavior based on the premise that we can do no wrong. That any move we take to help is helpful, that any gift we have to give is welcome, that any feeling a foreign nation could feel is grateful.

When America thinks the entire world is so “insane” and “drunk” that only America cane make the important, sober, choices, then it is in fact that America is the Nation suffering from mental illness. You know what they say, right? If you think the entire world has gone mad, that the entire world is against you, that the entire world is violent and full of unrest, the unappealing truth might just be that you’re severely paranoid and might be the most mentally ill in the room. There is no way that the entire planet is conspiring again the United States — unless, of course, we have gone one step too far.

I am told that we have gone one step too far; however, Europe and most of the world is willing to let bygones be bygones because we’re loved by the world, at least mostly. Berliners no longer trust America but they’re willing to give Barack Obama a chance — they’re not willing to give John McCain a chance, sadly.

They see in John McCain an angry, malicious, foolish man — which is fine; however, in Sarah Palin, they don’t even seen some harmless vice presidential candidate, they see a very dangerous indicator that the McCain/Palin ticket will more assuredly take the United States to an even darker, more jingoistic, more conservative, descent into fascism.

When I tell people these things, especially on Twitter, I get the strangest response, even from the Democrats: “America is the best country on earth.” “America may not be perfect but there is no better country on earth.” “I am proud to be an American — I am patriotic, surely.” Alternately, I also get, “I think we have gone too far as a nation — we have descended into a self-centered feeding frenzy rife with elbows and short-sighted land-grabbing.”

To me, I am somewhere in the middle. I love the foundation of the Nation. I love the literature, the heart, the soul, the worlds, the music, the history, the compassion, the Faith, the persistence, the curiosity, and confidence, the optimism, and even the cocksureness! I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. There is a reason why many nations worldwide have patterned and even plagiarized our Constitution, to be sure.

Hell, Europe loves the idea of America! Basically, we are a nation that, in its source code, has embraced all that is liberté, égalité, fraternité; however, the world had not been able to enjoy our uniquely American version of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all the foaming at the mouth and the bared fangs! There is a fear that this mad-dog may have gone too far into its rabies and is too far gone.

In Barack Obama, they see that maybe what America has been doing for the last eight years as been a sort of postpartum, post-911, depression. That the Nation, all big and clumsy, hung over, and feeling a little sick, is finally reemerging from darkness into light — luckily, just in time, when the world needs a leader in the community and not just a dangerous paranoiac who lives in the dilapidated house at the edge of town.

The rest of the world has not given up on us as Americans or as America. Have we as a nation give up on ourselves?